Tagarchief: Roger Corman

Cult Radar: Part 12

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

FilmDungeon.com is glad to explore the video trenches to find that oddball treasure between the piles of crap out there. Of course, a treasure in this context can also be a film that’s so shockingly bad it’s worth a look, or something so bizarre that cult fans just have to see it. Join us on our quest and learn what we learn. Hopefully we’ll uncover some well-hidden cult gems.

Researched by: Jeppe Kleijngeld

Across 110th Street (USA, 1972)

Directed by: Barry Shear
Written by: Luther Davis, Wally Ferris
Cast: Anthony Quinn, Yaphet Kotto, Anthony Franciosa

Tarantino’s Jackie Brown opens to the same rip-roaring title song as this movie: ‘Across 110th Street’ by Bobby Womack. It’s a homage to an exploitation classic, a New York set crime thriller about a gang of black criminals who rob the mob, sparking a brutal chase involving both the Mafia and the police. The police duo in charge consists of the corrupt captain Frank Matteli (Anthony Quinn) and Lieutenant William Aylesworth Pope (Yaphet Kotto); a street guy versus a guy who wants to do it by the book. Their chemistry is electric, giving the movie an emotional and moral backbone amid the chaos. The film was slammed at the time for the extreme violence, and while the film is indeed gritty, it is generally well acted and executed. Beneath the grit lies a sharp commentary on race, corruption, and urban decay in 1970s America. Watching it now, it’s easy to see why Tarantino holds it in such high regard.

The Curse of Frankenstein (UK, 1957)

Directed by: Terence Fisher
Written by: Jimmy Sangster (screenplay), Mary Shelley (novel)
Cast: Peter Cushing, Hazel Court, Robert Urquhart, Christopher Lee

Peter Cushing stars as Dr. Frankenstein and Christopher Lee as the creature in Hammer Studios’ retelling of the Frankenstein legend. Directed by Terence Fisher, who would go on to make Horror of Dracula a year later, this film is often regarded as one of the finest adaptations of Mary Shelley’s novel, even rivaling the classic Universal versions. Told in flashback from a prison cell, Victor Frankenstein recounts the story of how his obsession with discovering the secret of life led him to commit unspeakable crimes. For a film made in 1957, the horror remains remarkably effective, due in large part to Lee’s chilling performance. As Hammer’s first color horror film, The Curse of Frankenstein was notable for its bold use of gore in color and its vivid gothic style. It marked the beginning of the studio’s signature brand of horror and launched a successful series of sequels, with Fisher directing several of them.

Dark Star (USA, 1974)

Directed by: John Carpenter
Written by: John Carpenter, Dan O’Bannon
Cast: Dan O’Bannon, Dre Pahich, Brian Narelle

John Carpenter’s debut film gives us a cynical look at outer space travel. Not the majestic kind Kubrick showed us in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but more like space travel as a monotonous, blue-collar grind. Dark Star is the name of the ship that looks like a surf board. The job of its crew is to destroy unstable planets. And while this may sound exciting, the five crew members – who have been on board Dark Star for twenty years – are mostly bored out of their minds and increasingly detached from reality. Co-writer and actor Dan O’Bannon originally conceived the idea of an alien aboard the ship, but budget limitations forced him to turn that concept into the film’s now-infamous beach-ball creature. His alien idea would later become Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979). Tarantino once called this movie a masterpiece. I don’t see it that way, but I like the 2001 parody concept and the execution, including the inventive special effects, is certainly well done.

Man Bites Dog | C’est arrivé près de chez vous (Belgium, 1992)

Directed by: Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, Benoît Poelvoorde
Written by: Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel, Benoît Poelvoorde
Cast: Benoît Poelvoorde, Jacqueline Poelvoorde-Pappaert, Nelly Pappaert

In this notorious cult classic from the French part of Belgium, a three-headed camera crew follows the gleefully depraved serial killer Ben, as he spends his days gruesomely murdering people for sport and profit. During the shoot, the crew becomes more and more complicit in Ben’s crimes. The sheer amount of killings is not very realistic, but the profiling of the killer, chillingly portrayed by Benoît Poelvoorde, convinces in all its sickness. The mockumentary concept was pretty new at the time, and the approach – taking the viewer inside the mind of a horrible human being, who – when he’s not busy killing people against depressing urban backdrops – is offering his warped and racist views in interviews – makes for disturbing cinema. The filmmakers, who worked on a shoestring budget, wanted to make something different, and they have succeeded in this task. C’est arrivé près de chez vous (‘It Happened Near You’) became a unique, deeply unsettling, and darkly comic milestone of cult cinema.

The Lady in Red (USA, 1979)

Directed by: Lewis Teague
Written by: John Sayles
Cast: Pamela Sue Martin, Robert Conrad, Louise Fletcher

Farm girl Polly moves to Chicago, where she becomes romantically involved with gangster John Dillinger. The film is curious in that it’s not really about Dillinger, but about his girlfriend and the unwitting role she played in the gangster’s famous demise at a movie theater. It traces Polly’s own descent into crime: she starts out as a seamstress, tries her hand at prostitution, and eventually ends up in jail. After Dillinger’s death, she organizes a dangerous but lucrative armed robbery on her own. Written by John Sayles, directed by Lewis Teague, and produced by Julie Corman – indeed, Roger Corman’s wife – the film unmistakably feels like a Corman-style exploitation picture, complete with plenty of bloody, machine-gun action. In his 2021 book ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood‘, Quentin Tarantino mentioned that in an alternate Hollywood universe, he directed a remake of this film. It certainly sounds like something he’d do well. Who knows – maybe an idea for his tenth and final movie?

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

BBC documentary (2003) by Kenneth Bowser, based on the book by Peter Biskind. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock ‘N Roll Generation Saved Hollywood tells the story of Hollywood in the 1960s, a time when the studio system was in crisis. Their films had become increasingly irrelevant.

The problem was that movies were run by studios rather than directors, and the studios had lost touch with what audiences wanted to see. Then a new generation of filmmakers emerged who reconnected with viewers. Directors such as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Dennis Hopper, Sam Peckinpah, Francis Ford Coppola, Arthur Penn, Warren Beatty, Robert Altman, Jack Nicholson, and Peter Bogdanovich.

“In 1963 the studio system collapsed”, says Bogdanovich. “It was over.” After the disaster of Cleopatra (1963, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Rouben Mamoulian), the Fox lot was shut down. It became a ghost town. Television took over. The old moviegoers died off, and American films grew more and more meaningless.

Meanwhile, art theaters screening foreign films were doing very well. Many of the new generation of filmmakers learned the language of cinema from auteurs like Fellini, Godard, and Truffaut.

Outside the studio system, Roger Corman played a pivotal role in training young filmmakers to make low-budget B-movies that performed well at the box office. Jonathan Demme, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, and Francis Ford Coppola all started under Corman. They succeeded by targeting the youth who flocked to the thousands of drive-in theaters across the country, audiences that loved horror and action. Corman also had a knack for choosing hot topics: Hells Angels were in the news, so he made The Wild Angels (1966, Roger Corman). LSD was trendy, so he made The Trip (1967, Roger Corman) based on a screenplay by Jack Nicholson.

In Hollywood, directors proved just how out of touch the studios were. Executives hated Bonnie and Clyde, but young people loved it. Studios had to adapt. Paramount, in deep trouble, was taken over by Gulf & Western, led by the eccentric Austrian Charlie Bluhdorn. He brought in the now-legendary Bob Evans as a producer, who helped turn the studio around. How? By giving directors more creative control. Like he did with Polanski, who made Rosemary’s Baby in 1968.

At Columbia, Bert Schneider also trusted and empowered directors, resulting in massive hits, most notably Easy Rider, released in 1969. The drug-fueled chaos of director Dennis Hopper and his team is visible on screen. It was a great film, and audiences loved it. It was the kind of movie that never would have been made under the old studio system. The same goes for Midnight Cowboy by John Schlesinger, also released in 1969 – an outstanding film. That same year saw The Wild Bunch by Sam Peckinpah, which pushed violent realism to a whole new level.

The 1970s began, and the director’s era was in full swing. Peter Bogdanovich released The Last Picture Show in 1971, a film rich in emotional depth and sexual content, more than audiences were used to at the time. Dennis Hopper tried to follow up on Easy Rider with The Last Movie, but botched the edit due to his drug use and constant partying. “I had final cut, but I cut my own throat,” he says in the documentary.

In 1972, Paramount released The Godfather in 4,000 theaters simultaneously, a massively successful strategy. The history of that production was recently chronicled in the excellent miniseries The Offer. Coppola had now become one of the greats. He used his influence to bring George Lucas back to Hollywood, where he made the wildly successful American Graffiti in 1973 – a film studios didn’t understand, but youth audiences loved. That same year marked the rise of another major talent: Martin Scorsese, whose Mean Streets won over critics and audiences alike with its originality and authenticity.

But 1973 belonged to Warner Bros., which released The Exorcist by William Friedkin. Using the same wide-release strategy as The Godfather, it became a huge box office hit. It was Friedkin’s second success after The French Connection, cementing his status as one of the untouchable directors of the time.

By now, the auteurs had taken over Hollywood. This led to artistic triumphs like Chinatown (1974). But the young directors hadn’t forgotten Corman’s trick of attracting young audiences. In 1975, Spielberg released Jaws, a film that redefined what success looked like in Hollywood. Corman said: “When I saw Jaws I thought: these guys know what I’m doing, and they have the money and talent and skills to do it better.” George Lucas took it even further with Star Wars in 1977. The age of the blockbuster had arrived.

It had taken a decade, but Hollywood was back on its feet. Expensive B-movies like Alien, Superman, and their sequels became the new studio model. For about ten years, directors ruled. That era came to an end in the late ’70s, but it was a glorious decade that produced countless classics – films still regarded today as some of the greatest ever made.

Dungeon Classics #37: Coffy

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

FilmDungeon’s Chief Editor JK sorts through the Dungeon’s DVD-collection to look for old cult favorites….

Coffy (1973, USA)

Director: Jack Hill
Cast: Pam Grier, Booker Bradshaw, Robert DoQui
Running Time: 90 mins.

‘Coffy is the color of your skin’, sings Denise Bridgewater in the opening theme of Coffy – a blaxploitation classic starring Pam Grier and one of Quentin Tarantino’s all-time favorite films. From the moment the stylish opening credits roll, it’s clear this movie is something special. Grier plays Flower Child ‘Coffy’ Coffin, a nurse whose sister’s life is shattered by heroin addiction. Fueled by rage, she sets out on a ruthless mission of revenge. Disguising herself as a drug-addicted prostitute, she lures street-level pushers into a trap – before blowing their brains out. But she doesn’t stop there. Determined to take down the real power players, she goes after the slick pimp and drug dealer King George, as well as the dangerous mob boss Vitroni. Directed by Jack Hill – an early collaborator of Roger Corman and Francis Ford Coppola before cementing his legacy as the king of blaxploitation – Coffy delivers everything the genre is known for: gritty action, bloody vigilante justice, and plenty of nudity, not least from Grier herself. While her acting faced some criticism at the time, her sheer star power is undeniable. She owns this film, elevating it beyond mere exploitation and securing its place in movie history as an absolute cult classic.

Death Race 2

Posted on by Jeppe Kleijngeld

Director: Roel Reiné
Written by: Paul W.S. Anderson, Tony Giglio
Cast: Luke Goss, Lauren Cohan, Sean Bean, Ving Rhames

Year / Country: 2010, South Africa
Running Time: 96 mins.

Direct-to-video sequel to Paul W.S. Anderson’s Death Race from 2008, which was in itself a remake of the Roger Corman produced cult movie Death Race 2000 from 1975. Anderson did come up with the story, but the director of this futuristic actioner is Dutchman Roel Reiné.

Storywise, this is a prequel to the first film and tells the origins of legendary driver Frankenstein. In the near future, prisons are run by private corporations, and in order to optimize the profits, they organise bloody spectacles that viewers can watch through paid internet streams. First, inmates fight one on one in bloody battles, but as audiences get bored, a deadly race is organised with fast cars armed with machine guns, napalm and missile launchers. Inmate Luke (Luke Goss), a talented getaway driver, is forced to participate.

In a film like this, it’s inevitable to encounter some implausibilities, which could be forgivable if the usually talented cast weren’t burdened with poorly written roles and clunky dialogue. The high-speed action is executed with skill, though the spectacular opening chase scene sets a standard that the rest of the film struggles to match.

One highlight is the ending – a satisfying homage to the 1975 cult classic that fans will undoubtedly appreciate.

If you’re seeking bloody violence, this film delivers in spades. Just don’t expect much beyond that.

Rating:

Biography: Roel Reiné (1969, Eindhoven, The Netherlands) went to the States after the success of his first film The Delivery. He had breakfast with Dutch director Paul Verhoeven, who told him, ‘you have to live here to make movies.’ Reiné made one more movie in The Netherlands before he moved to the States.

Filmography (a selection): The Delivery (1999), Adrenaline (2003), Pistol Whipped (2008), Drifter (2008), Deadwater (2008), Wolfseinde (2008-2009, TV Series), The Marine 2 (2009), The Lost Tribe (2010), Death Race 2 (2010), Death Race 3: Inferno (2013), Michiel de Ruiter (2015), Hard Target 2 (2016), Redband (2018)